On: The 5 Stages of Programmer Incompetence

[drbaskin]

This is more of a curiosity than anything, but one can always use Michael Spivak's gender-neutral pronouns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun

[NeilCJames → drbaskin]

I use 'singular they' because at some point 'one' started to connote pretentiousness. I don't see how Spivak pronouns solve that problem, but this off-topic sub-discussion has convinced me to go back to using 'one' (for disambiguation's sake).

[paulgb → drbaskin]

Wikipedia has a nice chart of gender neutral pronouns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Summary

[3pt14159 → drbaskin]

Oh man I wish these were in widespread use. It would simplify things greatly for everyone. I kinda wish HN just started using them and it spread out from here.

[Qz → drbaskin]

There are a bunch of different proposed gender neutral pronouns... which is part of why no one particular set has caught on yet.